Rationale:
The film I helped create with my partner revolved around a judgmental girl who realizes her mistake of judging people by their appearances when she meets the “mysterious new kid.” We wanted to do it because it we wanted to play with the idea of analyzing and the effect of someone realizing their own mistakes. What I got out of the treatment was a sort of coming of age story, where the plot-line follows the cliché of “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” I like the cliché in general, and it was an amusing idea where the titles would be utilized to relay our story, so I wanted to do it immediately.
Rationale Word Count: 114
Commentary:
“Wit” is a coming of age story about a judgmental girl who realizes her mistake of “judging a book by its cover” when she meets the “mysterious new kid” at her school. The film itself was written by my partner, Christian Pascual. I helped contribute to the development of the idea, showing Christian a certain stylistic device used from a certain mini series in the UK that utilized titles in each episode to convey certain points like text messages or thoughts that applied synesthetically to the viewers (such as the coat of a dead body being wet, or the inside of a ring being clean, obvious but no so obvious deductions). What I mostly did in the movie was operate the camera, co-direct, edit, and managed sound on my individual edit of the short film. Christian did mostly everything else, with little or no help from me at all. He created the script/story of our short film, which incorporates all aspects perfectly: it has 3 Acts of set-up, maze, and feeling, creates an impression on the cliché of “judging a book by its cover,” keeps character, portrays them well with excellent dialogue and actions, and has a unique, if not weird, climax to the plot. The casted actors were wonderful (even if one of them could not focus very well due to the pressure of a camera), and were dedicated and helpful in many ways. Physical attributes to the written characters weren’t really prescribed, but I’d like to state that Sierra Bower, our main actress, was perfect for the job. Her acting was amazing and kept the shooting to an efficient minimum. Each character has distinct characteristics, but none are really as developed as the main character’s is, written-wise. For the actual film, all of the characters were distinct and were recognized for their peculiar characteristics (save for the main character and her two friends, who were distinct in their own particular way). Almost all of the actors had a label to them, and if they didn’t what they did or wore separated them from the rest. For example, my character was known for the label “fatty,” and nobody else, whereas one of the main characters friends, though without a label, had blue hair and was clearly separated from the other, more down to earth friend. The cast’s overall acting was phenomenal, and worked well in the short film, as all had a sort of connection with each other, essentially creating a special niche that allowed the actors to bond with each other if not only for a moment. Wardrobe and make up was mainly left to the actors to decide, but once they picked one, they had to stick with it, a pact all of them kept quite dedicatingly (granted, most of the characters were only needed for one day anyway).
Problems I had encountered would be a plenty: most essentially with sound. I operated the camera fine, though shots should have been held longer here or there, and the continuity was not held in some places, the overall cinematography was great, especially since we used a Dolly Track to help take our shots. One particular shot I liked dollied from the back of a character’s head to reveal the other characters in the back and mid ground. One of the most important problems we encountered was lighting. One of our actor’s positions was against a window, causing his face to look darker and essentially lose shape of our actor (leaving only his silhouette). This created a huge problem, and we softened the hindrance by putting a small, but powerful, LED light in front of him. Though he was still dark, it was manageable. Another thing I wish I had done was use the tripod more. The tripod was constantly left on the dolly track, leaving us to operate hand-held. This created shaky shots in what could have been level shots. The shakiness of the shots weren’t obvious, however, and I’m proud to they were good for handheld shots. To mostly solve the shaky shot problem we basically just leaned on something stable to steady ourselves. The shoots overall were quick paced, efficient, and not to mention fun. During the shoots I gave my input and second opinions about what should be done in the shots and helped the actors figure out what to say. That job went perfectly fine, as I simply just supported the main director of the film. The actors were great, and they even helped with the continuity and asked questions when they didn’t get something, a trait which I value quite a lot. Everyone involved helped solve the tiny problems we had on set, and thanks to the quick thinking of our director, everything went pretty smoothly. Each of the students in our class was required to make an edit of our short films, and when it came to my edit, one word comes to mind: Long. Dragging. Any other synonym for tediously extensive. But, alas, that is film, and that is also the fun part of it all. Editing overall went fine because I had the writer’s Two-Column Shot, which made things so much easier. I incorporated typewriter styled titles, and symbols in my edit (i.e. Play, Pause, and Rewind symbol, as well as arrows). The cutting, trimming, pasting, mending, all went pretty well though nevertheless at a slightly slow pace.
One of the most irking problems I encountered, however, was finding out the microphone attached to the camera had been plugged into the incorrect slot halfway through filming at one of the sets. We had to reshoot at the location again anyway, so we decided to retake them, no problem. But of course, we did not check properly to see if we had all of the shots that had dialogue in it, so we missed 3 lines. Obviously, we had to get voice-overs from our actors, causing discrepancies in the sound, and though it wasn’t entirely solved, I toned it down a bit but adjusting the volumes in the sound. Another problem was the folly sounds we missed in the shots, but that problem was covered up by the music. The one and only problem we had with the dialogue we had at our disposal was one of Jackie Guerrero’s lines, where the line was said too softly to hear. Though I adjusted that volume to be higher, it didn’t help much. I am not a particularly great sound director, but I manage. I found most of my soundtracks with no problems other than going through the tedious routine of listening to many tracks. I had most of my film prepped and ready with sound, but had two problems: one, all of the songs so far were copyrighted, so it could not be used for an actual IB film. Two, I couldn’t find tracks for the middle part of the short film, the climax of the story. I ended up with an unsatisfying track near the end, and I wish to fix that if I had more time to. I also encountered the small problem of transitions. I debated with myself whether cross-dissolve or any other transition should have been used or not, and in the end I only used them for the intro and end, as well as the credits. The mixture of the two created a wonderful effect, and it was only one time when the cross-dissolve transition created confusion: when a part of a previous shot was added on because of the attributes of the cross-dissolve transition. I think the only huge problem I had would be not understanding the entirety of the story, only referring to the 2-column script sometimes and not most of the time. This resulted in a more, quirky edit than my partner’s. When I had watched my partner’s edit, I realized that I could have prolonged the scene of her realization, because when I realized I hadn’t, I realized I had undermined the importance of her realization. I didn’t know how to convey that feeling, so it might not have reached the audience—a mistake I will never make again as long as I can help it.
Though the short film itself was wonderful, I believe the strong points in my film were the intro and the credits. Our edits centered mainly around the intro, where everything is introduced and the background of the story is established. Both my partner and I are proud of our respective edits of the intro, because they’re amazing, so I highly recommend it be watched (shameless self advertisement). My trademark and what is, in my opinion, the best part of editing are the credits. I usually take the scenes we never used in the actual film in the credits to accredit the actors and helpers of our short film, and my credits are pretty amazing (more shameless self-advertisement). I’m proud of my credits and I hope everyone involved with the film is satisfied with it as much as I am. In my opinion, the short film was a great success, and though some things could have been changed, we live, learn and conquer. Well, maybe that last part was out of context (but the truth of it cannot be denied, after all).
Commentary Word Count: 1,544
